Birthday Fic: Mimosa (1/1)
Title: Mimosa (1/1)
Author: burntcircles
Movie-verse: Slumdog Millionaire
Spoilers: YES.
Characters: Jamal, Salim, Latika
Rating/Genre: PG / Het
Length: ~1,500 words
Summary: She came with the rain, and yet she shone brighter than anything he’s ever known. She was his sun.
Disclaimer: I haven’t read Q&A, the novel on which Slumdog Millionaire is based. I own nothing.
Author's Note: Chock full of spoilers, so if you haven't seen the movie please feel free to skip. A belated birthday gift for domfangirl. I'm very rusty, but you'll understand, yes? *g* I really hope you find something in this to like.
Even as a child, Jamal had few illusions. It was inevitable. Home was a ramshackle uncertainty of galvanized iron, and his view of the delicious blue height of the sky was irrevocably besmirched in his memory by the rubber tire weighing down their roof to keep it from blowing away in the wind. There was school and he was always late, and judging from the number of times the heft of a book hit the side of his face, flung from the adhyāpaka’s hand at him in exasperation, he was not very bright.
Yet there was his mother - a few words from her, and even the policeman backed down - and there was his brother, the steady bowler to his butterfingered fielder, the sure hand leading him through the narrow alleyways of the slum, the bubble of laughter beside him as they sat in the afternoon heat with their feet dangling over the stopped-up estuary, Bombay pulsing hot around them: two people he’d thought would always be around.
There were three of them. They were three, an indissoluble number in his mind.
Yet in the throes of rage men felt it apt to tear down even the humblest of homes. Even his mother was no match for a cudgel in a hand propelled by a hate he was too young to understand, the truncheon driving its unrelenting way through the air, silent, impassive, delivering its sentence before their eyes. And then there was only him and Salim, streaking through the shanties, shivering in the cold rain, alone in the world. He had few illusions, yet life wasted no time in chipping away at them, laying bare the hard glint of reality underneath.
Then the rain brought the girl.
She can’t go with us, Salim had said. No. It was the first in a string of denials that Jamal would ignore when it came to her, this slight figure with the tear-stained face and large brown eyes. Three was a nice number, which was not to say…Their mother was gone, nothing could fill her place, not even this girl. It was just that, standing in the downpour drenched to the skin, she wouldn’t leave.
He motioned and she came over, her steps devoid of haste, as if she’d waited so long that she could wait a million years more: she'd lost everything, and she had all the time in the world.
Latika, she said as she settled down beside him, the rain driving on. (There was no rhythm to it. There was no reason to anything.) My name is Latika.
.
Latika. Elegant. Standing on the garbage dump that was their new home, the pervasive smell of refuse enshrouding them day and night, her name was a hard, cruel joke. But Latika she was and would always be to him, and as the days wore on, more. She was joy, or whatever you called the thing that lodged in his chest when she smiled, lightening his heart, clearing the stench, washing him clean. She was lilting voice and playful gaze. She was love before he even knew.
And then he lost and found her, only to lose her again, in the hands of a brother who returned with a darkness to go with his gun. It was the hardest lesson yet: he’d been stripped of all misconceptions, had thought that he’d looked reality in the eye and accepted it, only to realize, in a dank hallway of an abandoned hotel with Salim closing a door on his face, Latika’s disturbingly acquiescent plea ringing in his head, that life was a ruthless, unrelenting teacher, and that when it came to him, it was far from done, leaving this bitter truth for last:
Salim gave, and Salim could take away.
They were three for far too quickly, the seconds falling through his fingers like dust. Then for a very long time, he would be alone.
.
Yet he would see her again, and she was more beautiful than he remembered.
The intervening years had failed to teach him that the planes of her agile body could swell and dip into new curves, that time could cast a profound sadness on the lines of her face.
What he’d also missed: that while he sought and waited for her with an almost lily-white ache, he’d grown to be a man, with a man’s swift, potent longings, and so he was unprepared for the rush of raw desire that coursed through him like fire the second he stepped into the fall of her warm breath. He yearned to touch her, and then he was, and although he was trembling his hand rested on her face with a light sureness, confounded, comforted by her strangeness.
--Come with me.
--With you? And live on what, Jamal?
--Love.
She would come to meet him as he’d asked, the city slowing down to a whisper as she smiled at him, his heart in his hands. But in the end Salim would be there once more-once again he wouldn’t be fast enough, and they would take her away.
.
And so Jamal decided to stop. Not to stop looking-he’d gone past the point of thinking that there would ever be a time that his wandering gaze wouldn’t repeatedly seek out her face in the crowd, that there would ever be a moment when the flash of a yellow dress out of the corner of his eye would fail to jump-start his senses, to set them ablaze, as though he was still on that train a long time ago, shouting her name as her figure threatened to recede into the distance. Those moments had come with unfailing regularity and so would be there again, all in a cycle of never-ending goodbyes, her steps picking up speed each time until one day she outran fate by a split-second and, reaching out, grasped a strong hand-except now, the hand that gripped hers wouldn’t be Salim’s but his, and he would hold tight, and she wouldn’t let go.
No. Now he would sit in this chair, the cameras and the hot lights of the stage trained on him as millions watched. He would share the spotlight with a two-faced man who had everyone fooled except him. His image would be beamed throughout the country and this time, she would find him.
.
Perhaps because it is indeed written-that a little boy from the slums would overcome big obstacles in the name of love- everything unfolded as Jamal had hoped.
If you happened to be in a narrow street in Mumbai one hot night not many years ago, a night fairly indistinguishable from other nights in a city where the weight of history and consequence had melted time into a unvarying torrent pushing ever onward, you would have seen cars stalled in the middle of the street, the heat rising from the road in thick wisps, and people crowded into homes and sidewalks and shops to watch the surprising spectacle of the young man with all the answers face the throng and a question for one last time.
If you’d peeled your eyes away from the screen though and instead spared a glance down the street, you would have noticed a different, though no less interesting, sight-a slender girl, no more than twenty, tearing down the road the opposite way, past the parked cars and the motorcycles snaking through them, running as though the next seconds held her very happiness.
Perhaps you might have wondered what could possibly be more important at that moment than witnessing an uneducated chai wallah make history by winning twenty million rupees, what could possibly not wait until the question is thrown, the answer is given, and the suspense resolved. As the young man used his last lifeline and the phone of his friend-an estranged brother, you wouldn’t have known that, too-rang on and on, you would have noticed that her speed was fuelled by the haste of discovery, and that in the dense, humid air with her yellow dupatta trailing behind her she became almost ephemeral, a blurred band of mimosa.
You would not have known that she was an orphan. You would not have known that long ago, she'd run as though her life depended on it, too, and that her faith had failed her, leaving her standing by the tracks in an old yellow dress. You would not have known that just that night, she’d felt as if she’d lived a thousand lives and, broken, had almost reconciled herself to her fate.
You would have turned your attention back to the young man in the game show just as someone answered the phone in the nick of time, and you wouldn’t have known that the woman’s voice that came on the air was hers. Glancing absently back you might have seen her holding a phone to her ear, smiling, so there was no way you could have linked her obvious delight to the fact that the young man was doomed now, it seemed, his lifeline not knowing the answer to the question, either.
So you wouldn’t have known that, even before he made his guess, the man had already won.
You wouldn’t have known that his brother had given back more than he’d taken in a supreme act of self-sacrifice.
You wouldn’t have known all these things, but still you might have thought that she made a lovely sight, that it was a loveliness borne of the kind of hope that came after so much pain.
You might have felt that something good had come to the world that night, and you would have been right.
(End)
Author: burntcircles
Movie-verse: Slumdog Millionaire
Spoilers: YES.
Characters: Jamal, Salim, Latika
Rating/Genre: PG / Het
Length: ~1,500 words
Summary: She came with the rain, and yet she shone brighter than anything he’s ever known. She was his sun.
Disclaimer: I haven’t read Q&A, the novel on which Slumdog Millionaire is based. I own nothing.
Author's Note: Chock full of spoilers, so if you haven't seen the movie please feel free to skip. A belated birthday gift for domfangirl. I'm very rusty, but you'll understand, yes? *g* I really hope you find something in this to like.
Even as a child, Jamal had few illusions. It was inevitable. Home was a ramshackle uncertainty of galvanized iron, and his view of the delicious blue height of the sky was irrevocably besmirched in his memory by the rubber tire weighing down their roof to keep it from blowing away in the wind. There was school and he was always late, and judging from the number of times the heft of a book hit the side of his face, flung from the adhyāpaka’s hand at him in exasperation, he was not very bright.
Yet there was his mother - a few words from her, and even the policeman backed down - and there was his brother, the steady bowler to his butterfingered fielder, the sure hand leading him through the narrow alleyways of the slum, the bubble of laughter beside him as they sat in the afternoon heat with their feet dangling over the stopped-up estuary, Bombay pulsing hot around them: two people he’d thought would always be around.
There were three of them. They were three, an indissoluble number in his mind.
Yet in the throes of rage men felt it apt to tear down even the humblest of homes. Even his mother was no match for a cudgel in a hand propelled by a hate he was too young to understand, the truncheon driving its unrelenting way through the air, silent, impassive, delivering its sentence before their eyes. And then there was only him and Salim, streaking through the shanties, shivering in the cold rain, alone in the world. He had few illusions, yet life wasted no time in chipping away at them, laying bare the hard glint of reality underneath.
Then the rain brought the girl.
She can’t go with us, Salim had said. No. It was the first in a string of denials that Jamal would ignore when it came to her, this slight figure with the tear-stained face and large brown eyes. Three was a nice number, which was not to say…Their mother was gone, nothing could fill her place, not even this girl. It was just that, standing in the downpour drenched to the skin, she wouldn’t leave.
He motioned and she came over, her steps devoid of haste, as if she’d waited so long that she could wait a million years more: she'd lost everything, and she had all the time in the world.
Latika, she said as she settled down beside him, the rain driving on. (There was no rhythm to it. There was no reason to anything.) My name is Latika.
.
Latika. Elegant. Standing on the garbage dump that was their new home, the pervasive smell of refuse enshrouding them day and night, her name was a hard, cruel joke. But Latika she was and would always be to him, and as the days wore on, more. She was joy, or whatever you called the thing that lodged in his chest when she smiled, lightening his heart, clearing the stench, washing him clean. She was lilting voice and playful gaze. She was love before he even knew.
And then he lost and found her, only to lose her again, in the hands of a brother who returned with a darkness to go with his gun. It was the hardest lesson yet: he’d been stripped of all misconceptions, had thought that he’d looked reality in the eye and accepted it, only to realize, in a dank hallway of an abandoned hotel with Salim closing a door on his face, Latika’s disturbingly acquiescent plea ringing in his head, that life was a ruthless, unrelenting teacher, and that when it came to him, it was far from done, leaving this bitter truth for last:
Salim gave, and Salim could take away.
They were three for far too quickly, the seconds falling through his fingers like dust. Then for a very long time, he would be alone.
.
Yet he would see her again, and she was more beautiful than he remembered.
The intervening years had failed to teach him that the planes of her agile body could swell and dip into new curves, that time could cast a profound sadness on the lines of her face.
What he’d also missed: that while he sought and waited for her with an almost lily-white ache, he’d grown to be a man, with a man’s swift, potent longings, and so he was unprepared for the rush of raw desire that coursed through him like fire the second he stepped into the fall of her warm breath. He yearned to touch her, and then he was, and although he was trembling his hand rested on her face with a light sureness, confounded, comforted by her strangeness.
--Come with me.
--With you? And live on what, Jamal?
--Love.
She would come to meet him as he’d asked, the city slowing down to a whisper as she smiled at him, his heart in his hands. But in the end Salim would be there once more-once again he wouldn’t be fast enough, and they would take her away.
.
And so Jamal decided to stop. Not to stop looking-he’d gone past the point of thinking that there would ever be a time that his wandering gaze wouldn’t repeatedly seek out her face in the crowd, that there would ever be a moment when the flash of a yellow dress out of the corner of his eye would fail to jump-start his senses, to set them ablaze, as though he was still on that train a long time ago, shouting her name as her figure threatened to recede into the distance. Those moments had come with unfailing regularity and so would be there again, all in a cycle of never-ending goodbyes, her steps picking up speed each time until one day she outran fate by a split-second and, reaching out, grasped a strong hand-except now, the hand that gripped hers wouldn’t be Salim’s but his, and he would hold tight, and she wouldn’t let go.
No. Now he would sit in this chair, the cameras and the hot lights of the stage trained on him as millions watched. He would share the spotlight with a two-faced man who had everyone fooled except him. His image would be beamed throughout the country and this time, she would find him.
.
Perhaps because it is indeed written-that a little boy from the slums would overcome big obstacles in the name of love- everything unfolded as Jamal had hoped.
If you happened to be in a narrow street in Mumbai one hot night not many years ago, a night fairly indistinguishable from other nights in a city where the weight of history and consequence had melted time into a unvarying torrent pushing ever onward, you would have seen cars stalled in the middle of the street, the heat rising from the road in thick wisps, and people crowded into homes and sidewalks and shops to watch the surprising spectacle of the young man with all the answers face the throng and a question for one last time.
If you’d peeled your eyes away from the screen though and instead spared a glance down the street, you would have noticed a different, though no less interesting, sight-a slender girl, no more than twenty, tearing down the road the opposite way, past the parked cars and the motorcycles snaking through them, running as though the next seconds held her very happiness.
Perhaps you might have wondered what could possibly be more important at that moment than witnessing an uneducated chai wallah make history by winning twenty million rupees, what could possibly not wait until the question is thrown, the answer is given, and the suspense resolved. As the young man used his last lifeline and the phone of his friend-an estranged brother, you wouldn’t have known that, too-rang on and on, you would have noticed that her speed was fuelled by the haste of discovery, and that in the dense, humid air with her yellow dupatta trailing behind her she became almost ephemeral, a blurred band of mimosa.
You would not have known that she was an orphan. You would not have known that long ago, she'd run as though her life depended on it, too, and that her faith had failed her, leaving her standing by the tracks in an old yellow dress. You would not have known that just that night, she’d felt as if she’d lived a thousand lives and, broken, had almost reconciled herself to her fate.
You would have turned your attention back to the young man in the game show just as someone answered the phone in the nick of time, and you wouldn’t have known that the woman’s voice that came on the air was hers. Glancing absently back you might have seen her holding a phone to her ear, smiling, so there was no way you could have linked her obvious delight to the fact that the young man was doomed now, it seemed, his lifeline not knowing the answer to the question, either.
So you wouldn’t have known that, even before he made his guess, the man had already won.
You wouldn’t have known that his brother had given back more than he’d taken in a supreme act of self-sacrifice.
You wouldn’t have known all these things, but still you might have thought that she made a lovely sight, that it was a loveliness borne of the kind of hope that came after so much pain.
You might have felt that something good had come to the world that night, and you would have been right.
(End)